With apologies to Dickens and tongue firmly in cheek

The World Series is over and San Francisco Giants fans must be overjoyed their team has won a second championship in three years.

There are also fans of many other teams in and around Truro, and their passion is admirable.

But this is a story of two particular cities - Boston and New York - where for about 120 years there has been a blood feud. And the passion that these two cities create in their fans is well and truly documented and manifested in our town. (Think your favourite barber shop.)

I have played ball with Danny C. for about 50 years and know him to be above reproach. Nelson M. has been a family friend forever and confidante of my dad. John S. is likewise classy and his dad also my dad's friend. And Jim F. is truly a wonderful friend, father and husband. So are they all - all wonderful men and, by definition as Yankee fans, these great guys are delusional.

So, then, this tale of two solitudes is of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong and of vice vs. virtue.

There is, as I write, no hockey for the foreseeable future. I intend to ask my friends to send me cookies and cakes for a bake sale to aid these poor, poor creatures. Bless their hearts.

But this is of baseball. Through some quirk of cosmic nature, the Red Sox were not in the World Series this year. Fortunately, through divine intervention, neither were the Yankees. Further proof of a divine blueprint for our lives.

That the Yankees are evil-pure evil is a given. In fact, all that is evil in the world could possibly be traced to their very existence. It is an existential argument. The Red Sox, on the other hand, are all that is good. Think of Heidi, Ol' Yeller, your mittens from your grandmother or your favourite jeans. All that is good in the world could conceivably be traced to their existence. Again, an existential argument.

Need more. The Yanks play in the Bronx in a cold, impersonal stadium. Doesn't the very word ‘Bronx' remind you of a beefy, tattooed bouncer in some dark speakeasy? The Sox play in a park. A park is an oasis of serenity and peace and pastoral delights. Neil Diamond would never sing in a ‘stadium.' Fenway's neighbours include Harvard, the Charles Riverand the Longfellow Bridge. On the other hand Yankee Stadium is not far away from New Jersey - and Snooki!!

The Sox gave the Yanks the Babe and they made him fat. The Sox gave them Roger Clemens and he turned into a drug store. Can't they do anything civil?

Truro has ball fans for many, many teams. These people are decent, God-fearing, highly rational folk but whose lives are bereft of baseball emotion. Their teams are not the Evil Empire. The Red Sox are the Lone Ranger, Perry Mason, Father Knows Best, and Ozzie and Harriet. All that was ever pure and homey.

Stephen King, the president of Harvard, MIT, Amherst, the Kennedys - all Sox fans. Yankee fan of note? Donald Trump and his hair.

I know the defenders of the Evil Empire will argue about the many titles. All bought with blood money I counter. Numbers alone cannot buy you serenity. The Yankee pact with the dark side of the force will continue. We, on the other hand, will be content to frolic on our field of dreams.

Danny Joseph is a lifelong resident of Truro and a recently elected town councillor.